Would you like to work in a peaceful working atmosphere where you can TEACH? You will work in a city community with generous & caring parents, as part of a staff team committed to holistic learning, incorporating creative & expressive arts & active international links.

(PS Successful Ofsted December 2000!)

Our 210 children are positive about school, & proud of it. They are peer-mediators, student & anti-bullying councillors. Governors want an excellent teacher working towards being a head. Staff development is valued & supported. (Salary L5 to L9). Staff want a deputy who is a good mediator for all children & adults. We all agree with what our children want – a person who

• Is someone who can sort out problems
• Comes up with a lot of suggestions
• Explains clearly
• Doesn’t let people get away with things (has good discipline)
• Can give good advice
• Is humorous, & can take a joke
• Is patient – understands how people feel
• Is brave enough to do assemblies.

 Prologue

The following is an extract from a diary I kept whilst on holiday in Ibiza with my sister, Tracey, in 1978. It acts as an introduction to my recent, rather secretive activities!

 Tuesday 10^th October 1978

The weather wasn’t too good when we got up today so we decided to hire mopeds and see the island. Tracey didn’t want to go because she thought it was too dangerous.

First we went to the nearest café for something to eat – gristly bacon and greasy eggs have never tasted so good! Then we went to hire the bikes, where there was a bit of fuss because only James had remembered his licence. Eventually, Tracey, who had come to see us off, lent me her provisional licence - I forged her signature and signed the papers, whilst the woman hiring the bikes said it was too heavy for a girl to drive and banned me from taking the controls.

Only Gordon had ridden a scooter before so he drove one with me riding pillion, and James half-drove the other one with Mitch walking alongside. We went to the nearest empty space, a huge deserted car park, to practice. It was beautiful and serene – just on the edge of the coast. The sun was twinkling on the blue sea.

While James and Mitch practised on one, Gordon showed me how to drive the other. I didn’t really listen to his instructions. After stalling it once, I opened full throttle and shot over the edge of the car park down a twenty-foot drop.

All I remember clearly is the awful feeling of there being nothing under the scooter and then the sight of some huge boulders looming up very quickly. I attempted to push the bike in one direction whilst I went in the other, trying to relax for a rolling fall with my head and elbows tucked in.

The next thing I recall was subdued murmuring and then one of the boys straightening my legs out. Somebody gently moved the bike off me (I later discovered it had bounced off a rock onto my back).

Without even knowing the full extent of my injuries, I lay twisted and battered amongst the rocks and promised to myself there and then that I would never, ever get on another motorbike.

And for nearly twenty-three years, I kept that promise..........

Panic set in as we went out on real roads this afternoon.  Stopped at a bikers 'diner' on The Downs and had hot dogs in the drizzle - felt a mean babe. Instructor said we were going too slow.  Bad move chum.  My turn to lead, dual carriageway said 50 m.p.h.  Decided to go for it. 

Day 2

'Onion Woman' took to the roads today.  This is not an oblique reference to my ability to make people cry, merely recognition of the concentric layers that adorned my body.  The combined effect of the jacket, jeans, jumper, boots, socks and gloves (two pairs of each), scarf, tights, long johns, t-shirt and thermal vest, was warm, cosy and ..... impossible to bend in.

This became apparent when I was trying to climb on the instructor's huge machine at 8.15 this morning.  When your inside leg measurement is less than Edith Piaf's cubit, extra wadding is not a good idea.   At one point I thought I would need to ride pillion with my ankles on the handlebars.  Severing the blood supply from the knee down, I bravely forced my joints to triumph over the confines of the fabric.

The ride was the most horrific experience of my life - I'd rather have triplets without anaesthetic.  By the time we reached our destination, I had applied so much pressure that the instructor's chest was positively concave – no doubt his nipples will return if we get a cold spell.   The side-wind on the M5 (Avon Bridge section) was truly terrifying and, resembling the Michelin man as I did, we certainly caught most of it.

New instructor today - he says we're going on the 500s tomorrow.   Does this mean something to anyone?  Oh, and I must learn how to swear and smoke so that I fit in with the boys.

1.Introduction
In June 2000 I conducted a two -week seminar on the Integration of the ICT in Education, in Shanghai, at the request of Institute of General Education, Shanghai Academy of Educational Sciences.

It was my first visit to China and my first meeting with the Chinese culture and way of thinking.
I didn’t know what to expect nor did I know how to conduct such a seminar successfully.
I was ignorant of the needs and ways of thinking and codes of behaviour of my students as well as of my hosts. The "silent Language" of the Chinese culture was a mystery to me, and still is, I am afraid.
Though I had many fears and apprehensions as to the seminar and my ability to successfully conduct it , the seminar was a great success. My hosts were most hospitable and gracious. I had a wonderful experience. All I can say now, is that I am sorry the seminar was so short and had no continuation.
The following is a description of the seminar and some words about my impressions.

2.Background

In April 2000,I was approached by Mr. Uzi Israeli, the director of the Ofri Center at the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who asked me to go to Shanghai and to conduct a two-week seminar on integrating the ICT in Education.

5. The Seminar
The two-week seminar was conducted between June 18th and June 29^th at a pedagogic center in Shanghai.
Participants: 42 computer teachers and co-ordinators from various schools, mainly high schools in Shanghai.
Ages: 25-55+
Participant’s background: all participants were well-trained computer teachers and scientists. Some of them even wrote books or chapters in a book on computer usage, programming and teaching.
Number of computers: 42 as the number of participants.
Language of instruction: the course was conducted in the English language.
The pedagogic center: a well equipped center: a computer viewer, television, video, projection rooms, a science lab, many classrooms and an auditorium.

However, we were promised full, fast connectivity to the internet.
The internet didn’t work through out the seminar, except for very short periods of time.

5.2.Participant’s expectations of the seminar:
We soon learnt that our students expected us to present them with new software and programming. They weren’t interested in educational theories and their implementation via the new technologies.
We were somewhat at a loss.

In the faxes that we sent and in a preparatory meeting we had with Prof. Hu-Yu, who was our host and the seminar co-ordinator, we went to great length to emphasised that the seminar would focus on innovative educational theories and their implementation via the tools of the ICT. We accentuated the major role the new technologies played in enhancing new educational ideas, much desired.

The first two days were devoted, then, to laying and explaining the conceptual basis and to a discussion about the role of the computer in education in the information era.

The director general of the Academy of the Sciences of Education, came to our help, and on the second day of the seminar gave (in Chinese of course) a lecture about the importance of integrating the computer in the curriculum. It was then that we realised that" computer" and "internet" were being taught as a separate subject and that "word" "PowerPoint" "constructing websites" were all topics taught in specially assigned classes, having nothing to do with the rest of the school curriculum.

The importance of what we were about to teach became even more evident.
It was only logical then to lay down the main caveats for implementing and integrating the computer in the curriculum.

In order for computers to be well implemented in schools, their use must be based upon the principles of the OMCV=

Organic=1.computers should serve as a means for effective achievement of educational objectives. Their use should be organic in the sense of coinciding with and emanating from school’s philosophy and policy
2.use of computers in the classroom should be organic in the sense that it should take advantage of the unique opportunities that the computer and the IT offer us
Meaningful= computer use should be interesting, relevant, useful
Contextual= computer use should be as contextual as possible and not devoid of context
Varied= computers should be used for different kinds of activities, according to varied interests and by using a wide array of software and computer applications.

In two days the barrier between the participants and us was down. Concept was clear. Co-operation was beyond our expectations. Participants felt they were getting a lot out of the seminar. Their idea as to how to integrate the computer and the internet into the curriculum changed a great deal. In their evaluation forms they all expressed their enormous satisfaction with the seminar and the course material.

5.4. interdisciplinary learning, co-operative learning and multiple intelligences
The course presented the participants with new methodologies (new to them) as well as with new theories: Ted Sizer and The Essential Schools, Sternberg and his Triarchic Theory of Intelligence, Gardner and the MI; Project based learning ,co-operative learning, on going assessment, interdisciplinary learning and service learning, dialoguing, using many and varied sources of information, were quite new to our participants.
The Gardner theory of the Multiple Intelligences had great impact on our students. It was as if they underwent some revelation. They kept talking about his theory and tried to assess their own strong points. The students immediately integrated what they learnt into their projects and e books and each project and e book was constructed and built in light of the various intelligences the group members possessed.

5.5.Methods of teaching, workshops, assignments and products
Each day would start with an opening lecture,which I gave. In this lecture I usually presented the main philosophical and theoretical aspects underlying the methods and requirements we and our students were to use and to fulfill, on that day or in the coming days.
With the exception of short lectures, most of the work was conducted in workshops.
The students were given three major assignments:
a. to prepare in pairs an e book ( the Godard method as described else where in this paper ) in various subject matter ,according to their choice.
b. a project: to prepare a website in a specific area. Website was to include the 5 "entrances" recommended by Gardner: the historical, narrative, the statistic- logical, the essential- meaningful one, the aesthetic and the experiential one.
Students were encouraged to contribute to the project from their unique
points of strength, i.e., their intelligences.
c. To write part of a teacher’s manual, teaching other teachers how to implement the innovative methods of integrating the ICT in education.

All the assignments necessitated co-operative group work. The whole notion of learning in action while teacher serves as a monitor, guide, tutor, rather than a lecturer and the major source of knowledge, was new to our students.
Learning from varied sources, using the library, conducting surveys, interviewing informants, surfing the net and making telephone calls in order to get updated data, much of the aforementioned was innovative.

5.6.Using varied resources of information
On the third day of the seminar we took the participants to a resource center in a building next to the pedagogic center. The participants were asked to start looking for material and information for their projects. The projects chosen were in the following areas: music, smoking, sports, documentary movies, computer games, comic strip, and talk shows.

The participants had at first some difficulty in gleaning information from a wide array of varied sources.

We often heard the complaint "we can’t find any information relating to our project".

Getting information from many sources, some of them less canonised was a new experience for our participants.

They found the idea of conducting surveys was most appealing and they tended to over use it, and not pay attention to such minute details as number of informants, or informants’ knowledge of the subject etc.

Getting information from authoritative sources such as the national radio or television was met with opposition and disbelief as to whether information would be given.

On the whole the students seemed to like very much the new methods of teaching and learning though at first they were met with much doubt and were considered "not serious".

5.7 Completing the first assignment : making an e- book
(MORE INFO ON THIS IN THE COMPLETE VERSION)

The following is an explanation given to the participants as to the Godard e-book model.

Zila Godard is the chief librarian at the David Yellin’s College of Education in Jerusalem, Israel. Between 1995-6

Mrs. Godard was an MA student at the David Yellin’s College of Education. Her thesis combined her work as a librarian with the new technologies and action research. Zila explored the possibilities of innovative presentation of a text,that the new technologies have opened to us . Zila made extraordinary use of the hyperlink for building a prototype of an e book.

As I was one of Zila’s teachers in her studies towards the MA and one of the readers of her thesis, I was fascinated and captivated by the imaginative, thoughtful manner in which she used the hyperlink to present a new technological, meaningful , self contained e-unit(s).

Being that impressed with her work , I asked Zila to meet with the teachers of the Alon school , where I have been working as an academic adviser, and to demonstrate to them the unlimited options this model of hers offers to teaching and learning. Presented with her model, the teachers decided to implement Zila’s model in many of their classes, in different subject matters.

It was this model that I introduced to the seminar’s participants.

5.8. day 10 of the seminar
On the last day of the seminar, the learners were asked to summarize the course work in a manual to be distributed to other teachers who didn’t participate in the two-week seminar.

The manual was to be uploaded to the course website, when and if the internet connection, worked. I am a great believer in having a teachers manual as a final summative product; it helps learners review in an organic, meaningful, contextual and varied manner what they have learnt throughout the course and helps disseminate the ideas and subject matter taught to others.

That night the national educational TV devoted about 15 minutes to the seminar and its products. Its most unfortunate that the Chinese language is Chinese for me, and that I could not understand what was being said.

5.9.The closing ceremony
The seminary ended in an impressive ceremony speeches were made:

Students’ representatives also gave speeches in which they all expressed their enormous satisfaction from the seminar. They all mentioned the impact the new theories and especially the Gardner theory of the Multiple Intelligences had on them.

This was met with some dissatisfaction on the part of the seminar organizers, our Chinese hosts.

In one of the speeches made, the speaker addressed this issue saying something in the following vein: " if we, at the academy were to teach you the Gardner’s theory , you would have said that it was boring, but now that people from overseas taught you that you are very excited and enthusiastic about it."


6. Difficulties encountered and plans that didn’t work

K Independent study
We expected the participants to stay every day after class and to do some more work on their own.We were ignorant of the study habits of the Chinese and of the size of Shanghai. Coming from a very small country ( Israel) we didn’t realize that some of the participants spent some 4-5 hours every day driving from their homes to the pedagogic center and back.

K Study tour
On day 7 of the seminar we conducted a study tour to one of the experimental schools in Shanghai. We, the Israeli teachers were most impressed with the school, its structure, equipment and methods of teaching, even though they were mainly frontal. We attended a music class where each child had an organ combined with a flute.The children also acted out some scenes and sung songs for us.

In light of our enthusiastic response to the school, its teachers and work, we were very surprised at our students reaction.They felt the study tour was a sheer waste of time.

Many of them "disappeared" during the visit and when we reconvened at the pedagogic center, only a few attended.

I am still unsure as to why that was so..

It may well be that the students saw the study tour as a day off, or maybe they enjoyed more the intense, more practical work with the computers that they did under our guidance at the pedagogic center.

7.Summary and discussion

The seminar was very successful. The participants showed great interest in the topics discussed, the methods used and the material presented in the seminar.

The new theories in education, the Multiple Intelligences, the Triarchic theory of the intelligence, The Essential Schools, Cooperative Learning and others were somewhat of a revelation for the students.

They expressed their feeling that this was just "an aperitif" and that an in depth seminar dealing with each theory in elaboration and its impact upon the integration of the ICT in the schools, should be conducted in the near future.

The participants’ interest in educational theories, rather than in "how to teach PowerPoint" or
some programming language, demonstrated the impact the seminar had on those who attended it.


Cultural differences ,the time element and a continuation

What I find fascinating about this seminar is the meeting with people from a very different culture. We were told that the Chinese are reserved, that they don’t show emotions, they don’t participate in the classes and that they "sleep" in the classroom.

Fortunately , non of the above happened. The two first days were difficult.

Much of the seminar’s success lies not only in the good academic work, but in our ability to be attentive to our students and hosts’ needs and wishes.

On the whole, I feel that the seminar was too intense, that it should have lasted for at least three weeks if not a whole month, and that more time should have been given to the students to digest the new material they learnt.

I also feel that unless there is a continuation of the work, a second seminar, for a longer period of time, our work may have been of very little use.

This and more, I don’t know if there has been any implementation of the ideas , methods and theories taught, in the Shanghai school system.

Unfortunately we haven’t heard from our hosts with the exception of a beautiful Christmas card which Prof. Hu-Yu sent me.

I must say that this somewhat saddens me, as I would have loved to know if our work had some lasting impact.
I don’t know if this lack of communication has to do with cultural differences, I wrote a couple of letters which were left unanswered, or it’s just that every day life carries us away in its own direction.

An end note-on hospitality

I would like to end with a non academic note.
The hospitality extended to us by our Chinese hosts was beyond my expectations.
As customary they came to pick us at the airport, drove us every morning to the pedagogic center and back to the hotel in the afternoon.
They took us around the city, to the promenade, the TV tower, treated us to fancy dinners ,and took us for an entire weekend to one of the recreation towns, about 200 miles from Shanghai.
Prof. Hu-Yu who coordinated the seminar, hovered over us like a mother. She called us every evening to know how we felt, took me to the doctor when I fell ill and saw me off. Before I crossed the departure line she bought me more presents ( some were given already at the closing ceremony) and hugging me, broke into tears. Her strong emotional behavior debunked any myth I might have had about " Chinese don’t show emotions".
This of course, can't lead to over generalization but put me on guard against my possible tendency towards over generalizations.